In 1988, if you had told anyone that the Soviet Union would cease to exist just four years later, you would have been dismissed as a crank. The institutions looked solid, the bureaucracy entrenched, and the power absolute. Yet by 1992, it was history.
Today, European politicians in Brussels, Berlin, and Paris suffer from the same dangerous optimism. They believe they are so safely ensconced in their institutional frameworks that public anger can never truly throw them out of the saddle. But looking at the trajectory of the European Union, I believe we are closer to a revolutionary moment than the elites dare to imagine.
We often hear comparisons to the 1930s, to Munich, to 1938. But this is the wrong history book. If you want to understand Europe’s current predicament, look instead to France in 1788 or Russia in 1917.
Consider the French Revolution. One of the primary drivers was the monarchy’s fiscal collapse, accelerated by its financing of the American Revolutionary War. Morally, supporting American independence was a justifiable cause. But practically? It bankrupted the state, failed to bring the expected economic benefits, and created the conditions for the monarchy’s overthrow.
Europe is walking the same path in Ukraine. We see leaders like the former Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin or Ursula von der Leyen making grand moral statements, insisting that Russia must be entirely pushed out of Ukrainian territory. But there is a massive gap between this rhetoric and political reality.
Paper is very patient. You can write any 28-point peace plan you like. But the reality is that Russia, China and Iran are outproducing NATO in a war of attrition — steel, drones, ammunition. In international politics, power is the main currency, and right now, Moscow has the leverage. The idea that aggressive powers are never rewarded is a nice bedtime story, but history—from Frederick the Great to the Prussian invasion of France in 1871—tells us otherwise.
By overextending ourselves financially and militarily for a conflict we cannot sustain, European governments are delegitimising themselves at home. You cannot demand that your citizens sacrifice their living standards for a war in the Donbas when they are worried about the cost of heating their homes.
This brings us to the second pillar of Europe’s decline: The Soviet-style prioritisation of ideology over economic reality. Nowhere is this clearer than in our energy policy.
For decades, we were promised that the “green transition” would trigger a new economic miracle. Olaf Scholz promised growth rates reminiscent of the 1950s. Instead, we have stagnation and contraction. We are shutting down blast furnaces and aluminium smelters in the name of saving the planet, while our geopolitical rivals expand theirs.
To put it cynically: You can go green, or you can go to war, but you cannot do both.
You cannot fight a war of attrition if you have deindustrialised your economy to satisfy an environmentalist religion that treats empirical evidence as heresy. It is complete madness. We have created a regulatory regime where saving a single salmon or protecting a nesting site takes precedence over national security and economic viability.
Then there is the cultural dimension. There is a fantasy in Washington and London that Germany can simply “flick a switch” and become a military power again. But you cannot spend 40 years teaching your youth that nationalism is evil, that patriotism is suspect, and that the military is bad, and then expect them to suddenly rush to the recruitment office.
Young German men are asking a very logical question: “You want us to pay high taxes to support a migration policy that imports young men from Syria who live on welfare, and then you want to conscript us to fight a Russian tank in Eastern Europe?”
The social contract is broken. The Green Party—once the pacifists—are now the loudest militarists, while the only people with actual military experience seem to be in the AfD. It is a total inversion of reality.
People feel this disconnect. They feel it when they visit a Christmas market and see armed military guards next to the mulled wine stand. We are told crime stats are fine, but the anxiety is real. A society where mundane activities require military protection is not a healthy society. This is why voters in Austria, the Netherlands, and increasingly Germany are looking toward Hungary and asking why the Hungarians don’t have these problems.
If these grievances are not addressed, the system will break. A revolution doesn’t always mean pitchforks in the streets; it can happen at the ballot box. But if the establishment tries to ban parties, censor speech with “democracy shields,” and prevent political change, they only make the eventual eruption more violent.
The Soviet Union thought it was eternal in 1988. The French monarchy thought it was secure in 1788. The EU thinks it is safe today. They are wrong.
The elite are selling a lie and the people know it now